Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

In Adam Cesare’s terrifying young adult debut, Quinn Maybrook finds herself caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress—that just may cost her life.

Quinn Maybrook and her father have moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs, to find a fresh start. But what they don’t know is that ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. 

On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.

Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now. 

YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee

It’s an all-new horror classic about what happens when the truth is the last thing we want to believe, from Bram Stoker Award–winner and master of thrills and chills, horror legend Adam Cesare.

After barely making it out of the Kettle Springs cornfields alive, Quinn’s first year away at college should be safe and easy. All she wants is to be normal again.

But instead, Quinn finds that her past won’t leave her alone when she becomes the focus of online conspiracy theories that claim the Kettle Springs Massacre never happened. It’s a deranged but relentless fantasy, and there’s nothing Quinn can do to get people to hear the truth—not even on her own campus or in her own dorm room.

So when a murderous clown attacks Quinn at a frat party while another goes after her father in Kettle Springs at the same time, Quinn realizes that the facts alone are never going to save her. Her only option is to go back into the cornfields, back where the nightmare began, to set the record straight the only way she knows how. Because when the truth gets lost in the lies, that’s when people start to die.

Clown in a Cornfield was 2020’s Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. Clown in a Cornfield 2: Frendo Lives is perfectly set to attract old and new fans to the series.

"Sometimes everything goes wrong, in the best possible way. Think Snuff and Cannibal Holocaust meeting at a midnight movie. And then give one of them a camera, the other a knife." - Stephen Graham Jones, author of MONGRELS and THE LAST FINAL GIRL

Thirty years ago, cynical sleazeball director Tito Bronze took a tiny cast and crew to a desolate island. His goal: to exploit the local tribes, spray some guts around, cash in on the '80s Italian cannibal cinema craze.

But the vengeful spirits of the island had other ideas. And before long, guts were squirting behind the scenes, as well. While the camera kept rolling...

TRIBESMEN is Adam Cesare's blistering tribute to Eurohorror, Ruggero Deodato, and Lucio Fulci: an irreverent glimpse into grindhouse filmmaking, stuffed inside a rocket of non-stop tropical mayhem.

17 horror Stories. One legendary music venue.

We all know the old cliché: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now, add demons, other dimensions, monsters, revenge, human sacrifice, and a dash of the truly inexplicable. This is the story of the (fictional) San Francisco music venue, The Shantyman.

In Welcome to the Show, seventeen of today's hottest writers of horror and dark fiction come together in devilish harmony to trace The Shantyman's history from its disturbing birth through its apocalyptic encore.

Featuring stories by Brian Keene, John Skipp, Mary SanGiovanni, Robert Ford, Max Booth III, Glenn Rolfe, Matt Hayward, Bryan Smith, Matt Serafini, Kelli Owen, Jonathan Janz, Patrick Lacey, Adam Cesare, Alan M Clark, Somer Canon, Rachel Autumn Deering and Jeff Strand.

Compiled by Matt Hayward. Edited by Doug Murano.

Bring your curiosity, but leave your inhibitions at the door. The show is about to begin…

TOC:

• Alan M Clark – What Sort of Rube
• Jonathan Janz – Night and Day and in Between
• John Skipp – In the Winter of No Love
• Patrick Lacey – Wolf with Diamond Eyes
• Bryan Smith – Pilgrimage
• Rachel Autumn Deering – A Tongue like Fire
• Glenn Rolfe – Master of Beyond
• Matt Hayward – Dark Stage
• Kelli Owen – Open Mic Night
• Matt Serafini – Beat on the Past
• Max Booth III – True Starmen
• Somer Canon – Just to be Seen
• Jeff Strand – Parody
• Robert Ford – Ascending
• Adam Cesare – The Southern Thing
• Brian Keene – Running Free
• Mary SanGiovanni – We Sang in Darkness

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Interview with compiler Matt Hayward:

What makes this horror anthology so special?
A: The book is as much an anthology as it is a collaborative novel. Each story explores the history of the Shantyman, a haunted music venue located in San Francisco with a long and bloody past. With the likes of John Skipp, Brian Keene, and Rachel Autumn Deering involved, we not only see the venue change throughout the decades, but also from changing perspectives, everything from psychological horror to extreme horror, and even a splash of comedy.  

Q: Tell us more about the venue and the history of the building?
The Shantyman's history is the product of author/illustrator Alan M Clark. Alan usually tackles historical horror, and I wouldn't have chosen anyone else to take on the task. What Alan delivered was a seven-thousand-word horror juggernaut set in San Francisco’s gold rush era, involving a traveling singer who gets shanghaied. I won't ruin any surprises, but there are cannibals. Alan sets the gruesome scene from which every other story stems.

Q: What made you think of this theme for the anthology?
A: About a year ago, I attended a comedy show at a famous music venue here in Dublin. The main room was seated, and the audience rather docile.

No: this is not the world’s best math problem, it’s Exponential the rollicking, brutal, gory, and strangely poignant horror novel from Adam Cesare.

Criminals and screw-ups need to face down science run amok in this literary tribute to films like Tremors and The Blob.

“Exponential is an excellent novel, one of the best creature features I’ve read in years…”
—Horror After Dark

“Adam Cesare’s mix of grim violence and old school horror movie references make for a great read.”
—Rue Morgue

"Exponential is fast-paced fun, a rollicking monster movie in 200 quick-moving pages." —Ain'tItCool